Council IT

Lee H

Hi

I have worked for 2 local authorities and have to comment on how they purchase their IT equipment.

They pay roughly a 3rd extra on all IT equipment wether it be Laptop or PC, HP or Dell, and with it they get a 5 year on site Warranty.

My point is, example: a £600 PC which is actaully worth £400. For every 20 purchased thats £4000 extra for 20 extended warranties. In the 4 years (not including 1st year warranty) how many of these PC's are going to need a warranty call. Maybe none but certainly not at a cost of £4000.

If say IT departments paid bottom price for all IT equipment and kept a few spare parts ie Mobo's, memory etc. Almost every member of an IT depatment should know how to change a stick of Ram or swap out the Mobo.

I cringe at the thought of my hard earned money contributing towards overpriced and unjustified IT warranties.

Anyone else work in IT that have a similar setup please comment

Thanks for reading my Monday gripe

Lee H

Megadeth4168

I work for a Local Government IT department. We actually have a really good contract with Dell. We get great pricing, but we stick with the 3 Year warranties not the 5 year plans.

I agree with you about keeping spare/replacement parts available... We sort of do... We just keep a couple of the older computers that get swapped out. The problem is that things change so fast that the spare computers we have sitting around are only good for 25% of the people.

Many of the Local Municipalities in Michigan where I live have been having budget issues. We have had to basically cut our computer replacement program.

We had our replacement program set to replace a different department every 3 years. Problem is that once the economy went sour here, we cut the replacement program and just lived with what we had... Up until the year anyway, we have had a good year.

Any way the problem is that over the past few years that we were not buying replacement computers for departments, we were still buying a computer here and there for people who really needed more power.....

So now we have so many different computers that we could not possibly keep spare parts for all of them stocked..... We finally just last year took out of rotation all the Pentium 3 computers. And we finally got rid of Windows 98... It was still on some lingering computers.

You might want to propose going to a 3 year plan and with the savings, if something were to happen after the warranty is expired you would have more than enough to buy a new machine or spare parts for it. Just a thought.

/usr

You never know, really.

At my old job, we ended up with a total of around 40 Dell SFF GX620's.

After about 6 months, the hard drives began locking up and the machine would blue screen. Within the span of a year, I think we used the warranties to replace around 20 drives.

They were getting too hot. I noticed that Dell fixed this with the 720's by adding a fan over the HD.

Lee H

Hi

we used the warranties to replace around 20 drives

This link will show 80Gig hard drives for £20

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Hard+Drives/IDE/80GB+Maxtor+DiamondMAX+IDE+2MB+?productId=24338

£20 X 20 = £400

How much extra did you pay on those 20 PC's to have £400 worth of new hard drives or maybe a little more when they were dearer, this is my point exactly. I would understand if people purchased this extended warrany if there were no other IT people around but how can this be a justified expense in a 50+ IT department


Lee H

Lee H

also just noticed on your reply /usr

After about 6 months, the hard drives began locking up

If this related to a hardware issue it would have been covered in its first year anyway

Lee H

-sorry for the double reply-

Kaminsky

I remember years ago, I was in charge of PC support for a 5000 user hospital. We had a Kyocera laser printer, 3 tray. Cost a fortune but with it came 3 year warrenty.

2 years and 11 months later the thing had a fault. Nothing really serious but I phone it in nonetheless. I was gobsmacked when an engineer turned up with a brand new one, upgraded model and just swapped them out. He explained it was not worth them quibbling. They take the old one back, fix it and sell it off cheap.

Upshot was, even though they were expensive, their attitude convinced me to buy all my laser printers from them in the future. This is exactly why they had that policy.


Although PC upgrading and fixing isn't rocket science, when your organisation is growing, it does actually pay to go for that warrenty and save yourself time and money in the long run. In larger organisations, although yes you can do the work yourself quite easily, your generally way to busy with other faults to put yourself under the added preassure of hardware fixes as well. This is where companies like Dell have realy cornered the market. Yes, you could go into detail and start soldering new bits and bobs onto the motherboard when they mess up but not if you have 30+ screeming users waiting for your pc staff to fix other things for them.

It may seem like your council is paying over the odds but your IT Manager has bigger fish to fry than worry about that sort of low level nonesense. If there is low workload then yes, certainly...

Kaminsky

Another thing about Council IT. Excellent training... Every training course I have been on, there is nearly half the class who work for a council somewhere. Especially in the UK. Great employers...

Lee H

Hi

in response to Kaminsky's comment's

I agree that it is easier to out-source PC faults with the supplier but i dont agree that councils should spend our hard earned council tax on it.

Some of the money saved by not getting an extended warrany could be used to create a new IT post dealing with issues that arise.

Like you said troublshooting hardware is not rocket science and if any large comapny went down this route i would like to think that they had at leat 10 hot swap PC's for end users to use whilst their's is being looked at.

Howerver many councils there are that use this kind of support up and down the country and in many other countries, imagine all those extra jobs that would be created if they decided to in-house PC fixing instead of lining the pockets of fat cat businessmen with our council tax money.

I wonder


Lee

Mishra

For the most part the warranties are there because of politics and admin opinion. Meaning I would want warranties on our desktops because

A. I don't have the time to troubleshoot desktops so I enjoy that the warranties are there
B. It is easy for management to understand the need to spend money on warranties
C. Warranties are still much cheaper than buying 1 employee

Lee H

Hi

Warranties are still much cheaper than buying 1 employee

Do you know this for sure, my guess is that a full PC is at least £200 pound overpriced to include the extended warranty.

Times that by however many PC's a council may buy in 1 year, example 2 PC's per week =104 for the year = £20,800. A very large council would by a lot more than 104 PC's a year i have seen it with my own eyes.

Wether it is the easiest option or not, it should be taken into account what would be the best way to spend the publics money

Anyone agree or not please say so as i feel very strongly about this


Lee H

Kaminsky

Lee H wrote:

A very large council would by a lot more than 104 PC's a year i have seen it with my own eyes.

Lee H

I doubt that this year where the government has again given the councils way less money than they need and at the same time, capped the maximum amount of money they can ask on Council Tax. I doub't many council IT budgets will be forking out lots of money this year with the inevitable cut backs. The training budget will also get whacked in my opinion. Always the first targets in a belt tightening year.

This will actually be where the warranties pay for themself as current stock of PCs will have to last longer and be looked after by the warrenty.

As much as I am happy about the cap in the amount of tax I have to pay to my local council for next year, I am not very happy at the sorts of services they will cut because of it.

If you do feel that strongly about it, why not nock up a business proposal as to the cost effectiveness of your strategy as you see it. Include the number of assets, incidents coming in where an engineer had been called where you feel the local IT staff could have done the work at a fraction of the cost. (Bare in mind that if the manufacturer wanted to be strict, anything you do inside the box would negate the warrenty for when something hapens down the line you don't have the ability to fix.

With this years financial climate, your potential cost savings may actually do well for your own deveopment in the promotion steaks. Be prepared to take it on the chin though if it is turned down.

Lee H

Thanks for your reply Kaminski

We will have to agree to disagree regarding PC warranties i am affraid.

I also dont think i am in a position to change any corporate standard regarding IT procurment, people above you dont like to be told a better way to de their job even if your right.

Soon as i am a Network Manager or in such a position were i buy lots of PC's then i know exactly how i am going to do it. And trust me i will save the company lots and lots of money.


Lee H

sprkymrk

Hi Lee:

I suppose without knowing the exact amounts, it would be hard to determine if the warranties are worth the extra cost.

I am not sure an extended warranty would really incur a 50% price increase on the computer as you stated (400 vs 600). In my experience it is more like 20%.

So depending on the actual prices, your solution of having an extra IT person on staff (remember to figure in his actual cost including HR overhead, benefits and salary) and keeping 10 hot swap computers (at 400 each) on hand is actually cost effective.

Lee H

I wasn't getting into exact figures, i just wanted someone to agree with me that another option to extended warranties is to save the money and use it elsewhere, ie extra staff. And for a council to use the warranty method is not using our council tax money to its best effect.

There is also the option of building your own PC's for your company.

That is a further saving, i run my own internet based company selling PC's so i know exactly how much every item costs at trade value.

Compare that to what you get from Dell, it could end up being a 50% saving on every PC.

Lee H